Chinese outlet calls US security threat claims exaggerated, dismisses slowdown push as 'sophisticated marketing' to contain China

As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have warned in succession about the possibility of AI escaping human control and called for a slowdown in development, China has in effect rejected the idea. Pictured is the opening screen of Kimi 3, an AI model developed by Chinese AI company Moonshot AI. [Reuters]
As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have warned in succession about the possibility of AI escaping human control and called for a slowdown in development, China has in effect rejected the idea. Pictured is the opening screen of Kimi 3, an AI model developed by Chinese AI company Moonshot AI. [Reuters]

China has fired back sharply at calls to slow the pace of AI development to prevent the technology from escaping human control, with state media and experts dismissing the push as "inappropriate, hostile and groundless." Beijing has countered that it has actively participated in efforts to develop global AI safety and governance rules, and suggested that the "slowdown" argument gaining traction in the United States amounts to little more than sophisticated marketing designed to contain China.

China's state-run English-language outlet Global Times on Monday cited Xiang Ligang, an expert in telecommunications and technology policy, to label Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's blog post urging a slowdown in AI development "inappropriate," "groundless" and "hostile."

Xiang is an IT industry commentator and founder of Chinese tech outlet Feixiang.com. He said Amodei "acknowledges that global efforts to regulate the pace of AI development would ultimately require cooperation with China, while at the same time advocating for restrictions on chips, computing capabilities and models to slow China's AI progress and explicitly seeking to widen the United States' technological edge over China." Xiang said Amodei's argument was "biased and contradictory."

The Global Times' critical stance reflects an awareness that calls to slow AI development would inevitably be accompanied by attempts to rein in China's aggressive AI push. The outlet said Amodei's post mentioned China 12 times, and shrugged off the piece as an effort to exaggerate the so-called "security threat" posed by China's AI advances while pressing for tighter restrictions on Beijing.

The outlet also took aim at the timing, noting that Anthropic and OpenAI are both approaching initial public offerings, and characterized the slowdown argument as "sophisticated marketing" intended to highlight just how fast AI is advancing and how capable the companies behind it are. Citing US outlet The Atlantic and others, the Global Times said "skeptics see this as a sophisticated marketing strategy to signal that 'our products are becoming too powerful,'" and described the warnings as a tool to stoke public interest in the AI industry and its capabilities.

China also pushed back on the substance of the debate, arguing that it has already been an active participant in building governance frameworks for safe AI use and that the recent slowdown discussion has strayed well beyond the bounds of "AI safety" — amounting, in Beijing's view, to an attempt to justify excessive restrictions on China under the cover of a broader regulatory conversation.

The Global Times pointed to China's hosting of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference and a high-level global AI governance summit in July as evidence that Beijing has actively engaged in international efforts to develop global rules on AI safety and governance. It also quoted Liu Xiaoshan, head of embedded AI at the Shenzhen Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Institute, as saying the proposed measures "place AI safety, national security, industrial competition and commercial interests within the same framework, going beyond the scope of AI safety" — underscoring China's argument that the push amounts to an overreach targeting Beijing.

However, analysts widely interpret events such as the World Artificial Intelligence Conference and the high-level global AI governance summit less as genuine efforts by China to work with the international community on proactive AI safety measures, and more as attempts to push back against a US-dominated AI order and build an independent set of international norms and a market ecosystem under Chinese leadership.


kate01@heraldcorp.com